Finding Myself in ... Mexico City
Sitting
in a rooftop café in Mexico City, I look out and see smoking rising from the Plaza de la Constitucion. It is the
cleansing smoke cast by an Aztec shaman in a purification ritual and it floats
to the sky with the spirits that are purged from those in the square below. I
wonder if I have been leaving a similar trail behind me as I’ve traveled the
past year, sloughing off the negative legions that attached to my soul and
weighed me down. I wonder if they have turned to smoke with each day spent in
the cleansing sun. If they were dried out by the salty blue waters of the
ocean. If the people I have met have hugged me and squeezed out the spirits
hiding in the cracks of the collapsing structure that I once was. Here in
Mexico City, I identify with similarly decrepit buildings, as they too tell a story
of standing through years of wear and tear. Age has put them at odd angles and
the shaking of the earth has sent cracks up the cement work. But they still
stand strong, a new layer of spackling covering the divots and breaks. Paint
peeled and chipped, yes, but still vibrant and unyielding in their presence.
My time
in the city has been long, and for that I feel that I should have an equally
lengthy list of accomplishments; places traveled and visited, monuments photographed,
history learned, day trips planned and executed. But instead, I remember the
weeks spent wandering the same streets of La Condesa and the multiple days in
the apartment, writing and staring at the view out onto the mountains. What is
the measure for accomplishment and good travel? Who must I answer to when the
time has come to leave and I must tally my adventures on a list? The answer: myself.
Which is way, when in the moment, I only ever do what it is that I want. This city
is grand and larger than I could fully journey in the two months I’ve given myself.
New York was my home for 10 years and I was constantly finding places to
explore and new things to see. Yet there is this anxiety that sits behind my
heart, a pressure that builds up in between my shoulder blades so that I find myself
stretching out my arms, reaching into the distance for something new to grab
onto. What I worry is that the something new I want to grab onto is a person.
“The heart is a lonely hunter, with
only one desire. To find some lasting comfort in the arms of another fire.
Driven by a desperate hunger.” – Carson McCullers
A few weeks into my stay in La Ciudad
de Mexico, I was taken in by a Latin lover. Was this not the plan? But immediately
I was on the defense, making sure to stay aloof and disconnected just enough to
protect myself and not be seen as a man of commitment longer than a day. But
then when offered a free place to stay for 2 weeks – in the heart of my
favorite neighborhood, no less – what was I to do? It’s funny to me now, but my
main concern was not to lead this man on, I didn’t want to make him think that
I was one for attachment, that he could convince me to become permanent in his
life; I wanted to maintain my distance. But now that I am gone from his place
and his arms, I find myself with a yearning to return. There was a
comfortability there that I have missed the most since leaving my ex-husband.
But then at night, when faced with spending another moment in the man’s bed, I
was ready to run. Perhaps then the comfortability I found was within a place,
rather than within a person. The feeling of home started to creep in. The lull
of a schedule and the comfort of a friendly view over the city. Knowing where
you were going to wake in the morning, where you would get your favorite cup of
tea, what restaurants were good fall backs when you didn’t want to cook, and
what grocery store you could run to when you got the itch to dirty the kitchen.
To me, this feels like a pattern.
When in a city surrounded by millions of people, I cling to one man and one
home. I want the seclusion of my own abode and I want the company of a single
person. The same way I shut myself off to the friends of my last lover is the
same way I was reacting to this man I was only just getting to know. I was
content with only his company and the escape to his apartment. And when faced
with a crowd of lovely people, I was the cast-away, floating in my own world of
solitude. This is not a pattern I want to repeat. I have spent the last year
opening myself up to the strangers of the world, exploring whatever shores and
lands those strangers may have been hiding. So why then, has one location and
one man so easily put me back in to the pigeon-hole of my past? Because I allowed
it, that’s why. The city is not to blame, the man is not to blame, the language
barrier is not to blame; I am. But that is a good thing! Because once it has been
recognized, I have the power to change it. Within myself is a world of possibilities,
I just need to remember to keep myself open to them. Which is why, every day, I
open my eyes and look for something new within the person that I am becoming. I
don’t judge the decisions I make in my travels, I simply do the things that bring
me joy. I don’t cling to the faults of my past, I simply let them slip into the
cleansing waters found in my journeys and cover the spots with scars and a tan.
And I do not close myself off to those who want to get to know me intimately, instead
I open a window into myself so we can see each other and explore the new worlds
beyond.
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